Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!rws
From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Proper way to set the root window's colormap?
Message-ID: <8910132012.AA15952@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 13 Oct 89 20:12:41 GMT
References: <8910131832.AA01861@ninja.Solbourne.COM>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 32


    For example, they might check if the colormap they inherited is one
    of the defined standard colormaps.  If it is, they then know how
    to map named colors to indicies.

This doesn't sound like the best idea to me.

    Or, they might inspect a special
    resource which would indicate whether to try and use a standard
    colormap.  For example, xterm*standardColormap: rgb_best_map.

Good, but then inheriting from the root is not interesting.

    Is is really possible to allocate *all* colors out of the default map?

It isn't a good idea, no.  Sorry, I was forgetting RGB_BEST_MAP vs
RGB_DEFAULT_MAP.

    How is the client to know that the default map has a standard colormap
    allocation?

A normal client shouldn't really need to know.  It may have to worry about
allocation failures, but it has to worry about that anyway.

    Wouldn't this break Xt clients, since they currently have 
    to allocate color cells?

RGB_BEST_MAP was a bad example; you can still create an RGB_DEFAULT_MAP out
of the default map, and leave room for a reasonable number of clients to
allocate.  If your goal is really to create an RGB_BEST_MAP and have everybody
use it, make your server define a StaticColor visual and make it the default.
(Half :-).